The globalisation of fear

In telephone conversation last week, Cauri referred to fear as “the ultimate commodity”, and - if we grant a little slack to the definition - he’s right. Fear thrives in a bear market, as we try in vain to trade our fear for security; and fear is the currency of war propaganda. There might be a limited demand for fear at the moment, but there’s an inexhaustible supply, as Mike Davis describes in the terrible, beautiful last paragraph of his book “Planet of Slums“:

This delusionary dialetic of securitized versus demonic urban places, in turn, dictates a sinister and unceasing duet: Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side.

Here’s the secret to fear as a commodity - not only can we can export it, but our overseas investment will pay us back richly over time and we can look forward to huge new reserves of fear being discovered. Everybody is a winner, except for those whose labour pays for our potentially insatiable demand for fear.

Too much weltangst for a Monday morning, I know.

“Luz Eterna” (central panel), Ana Maria Pacheco